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MARK HARRIS | Work
and Commentary
Video
Marijuana in the UK, 1999.
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I am reading texts to cannabis plants. In the two-screen synched
video, lasting ten minutes, sections of Charles Baudelaire's 1858
essay "Poem of Hashish" and Walter Benjamin's "Hashish
in Marseilles," from 1928, are read to cannabis plants. The
edits to each tape are indentical and the sound of each is heard
simultaneously. It was expected that exposure to these texts, concerning
the narcotic properties of hashish, would stimulate the plants
and improve their concentration of THC, the primary psychotomimetic
ingredient of cannabis. The viewer is caught in mirrored monologues,
eventually unable to distinguish one text from the other. "There
were times when the intensity of acoustic impressions blotted out
all others." The images blur closeups of the reader's
mouth. "Next occur mistakes in the identities of objects,
and transposals of ideas." Behind the reader are cannabis
plants whose drowsy scent distracts him from his book. "Sounds
clothe themselves in colors, and colors contain music." He
struggles to concentrate on his reading. "And when I recall
this state I should like to believe that hashish persuades nature
to permit us—for less egoistic purposes—that squandering
of our own existence that we know in love." Benjamin develops
his essay from notes made while hallucinating. The intimacy with
which both these writers describe their hallucinations suggests
that the vulnerability to phenomena induced by the drug had stimulated
a new kind of writing.
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Aspects of the Avant-garde | Table
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Contributor's
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